Insomniac that I am, I decided to read tonight the twenty+ pages on this thread I hadn't read. I've agreed with a lot; disagreed with some; but, @Mercer, the phrase I've highlighted nearly had me waking up the neighbours with laughter!! You've made the trawl through these pages well worth while. I'm going to call it a night after that. Thank you.

Or, to name the guilty people: i) The Venky's family; and, presumably, ii) Swaggot. All people who can't admit that they're out of their depth when it comes to owning and "running" a successful football club (not just a team).

They've owned us in each of the top three Divisions of English football. And by far the longest time of that ownership has been in the Championship. It seems obvious that they seem content - for reasons only they can fathom - for that state of affairs to continue ad infinitum.

No; what we need in January is for Venky's to sell the club - lock, stock and barrel - to an organisation which: knows something about owning a successful football club; and will back JDT and Gregg with some funds to allow us to acquire some decent fringe players. That way, we could be challenging for promotion at the end of next season. More of the same as we have at the moment; and we could be looking down, rather than up, at the end of next season. Thinking back, JDT may have made a rod for his own back when, on appointment, he spoke of Rovers being a "three windows project".

Reading this tribute to him, @DE., it's just occurred to me - I'm slow on the uptake at the moment - to wonder if anyone knows whether Birdy was the original of the "Rovers Till I Die" chant? Maybe not as the "composer"; certainly as the subject?

I've just posted what follows on the "The plot thickens ?" thread; but am copying it here because I thought this thread might get more readers, especially tonight. "Just listening to the Radio Lancs warm-up for tonight's game and they've quoted JDT as saying that the injuries to the two players who couldn't be considered for tonight's game could be caused by weaknesses in their legs attributable to sitting for long journeys on Swaggot's wonderful new bus. (My words; not JDT's!) "I can't remember if he was referring to Cardiff City or Bristol City - but at least one of those two clubsflies to away games in the north of England to avoid risking such injuries. "Yet another thing to thank our disinterested owners for! 😐🤔😬🙄"

Just listening to the Radio Lancs warm-up for tonight's game and they've quoted JDT as saying that the injuries to the two players who couldn't be considered for tonight's game could be caused by weaknesses in their legs attributable to sitting for long journeys on Swaggot's wonderful new bus. (My words; not JDT's!) I can't remember if he was referring to Cardiff City or Bristol City - but at least one of those two clubsflies to away games in the north of England to avoid risking such injuries. Yet another thing to thank our disinterested owners for! 😐🤔😬🙄

What a superb video; showing pride not just in the team, but the whole town.

Carrying on the theme of rivalries, I've often - sorry! - mentioned that I grew up in Blackpool the proud Blackburnian son of two exiles from the town. My Dad couldn't get work in Blackburn in the 1930s; but his Mum apparently had a share in a Boarding House in Blackpool so he worked there. And the rules back in those days were that women teachers - and Civil Servants?? - had to resign when they got married. However, they, especially my Dad, made sure I had blue-and-white blood in my veins. I find this thread a bit amusing for the way that those of us who grew up in "the old Lancashire" - including Merseyside and Greater Manchester - ignored most of the teams based there when it came to looking at rivalries. We never played Oldham Pathetic (as they were known to us) or Rochdull, as the locals seem to pronounce it, so they were never thought of as rivals. Those rivalries often took subtle forms; for example, I remember that in 1953, once Blackpool had won their F.A. Cup semi-final, it didn't take long for the ⅓ pint of milk we had, Mondays-Fridays at junior school, came in bottles which had tangerine tops, rather than silvery ones. So in those early days, my main rivals were Blackpool, even though it wasn't till I went to grammar school at the start of the 1957-58 season that we joined them - as well as Bolton, PNE and some other Lancashire team - in "the old Division 1". That was the school where I made my first acquaintance with lads whose first loyalties were to Bolton, PNE and Burnleh; often because their Dads had come from those towns to the Fylde Coast in search of work. And it was some considerable time later that I discovered there had been another Rovers' fan - subsequently a member of this Board, no less! - at that school. Right, enough of these rambling reminiscences; tonight's game will be a home win - clinched by the odd goal of three and preferably scored in the 74th minute!

Sorry, @Leonard Venkhater , I can't take seriously anybody whose parents named them after a character in an 80s US TV Serial!

Erm, well, yeah; it would rather defeat the raison d'etre of most team sports. Excuse me asking; but what would be the sense of playing most team games without opponents? Isn't that what I'm sure more than a few of us on here might think of as "Claret logic"?!

Or, given our ownership, any money, either!

In any correspondence with my old schoolmate now in New Zealand who follows That Lot from Burnley, I always use the phrase "Lancashire's Most Historic Football Club" on the grounds that we've won, among other Trophies, The Football League; the Premier League; the F.A. Cup; and the Football League Cup. It's the breadth of our successes that make us Lancashire's Most Historic Football Club. (To spare his blushes, I never refer to the Full Members' Cup. That's because we won it the season before That Lot came within 5 minutes of dropping out of the Football League altogether!)

Doubtless, given the weekend it is, both teams will be wearing black armbands throughout the game, anyway; but, surely it must be possible for the announcer to use some form of words before the Last Post referring to us having "lost one of our own." without seeming disrespectful to the soldiers whom we'll be commemorating?

I didn't know that - or Birdy, either; except by reputation - but, if that's the case, then it's fitting in a way. He really was a legend in his own lifetime. A taxi driver who collected me from the Car Park after our last trip to Turd Moor last December pointed his house out to me as if it was part of a tour of "Historic buildings of Blackburn"! R I P.